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IThere is a wrong way of thinking that one has rights, and a wrong way of thinking that one has not any.
Simone Weil'No woman had a voice in the design of the legal institutions that rule the social order under which women, as well as men, live.2 Nor was the condition of women taken into account or the interest of women as a sex represented. To Abigail Adams' plea to John Adams to "remember the ladies" in founding the United States, he replied, "We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems."3 Mostly, one senses, women as such were beneath notice at the White. The law librarians at Michigan, especially Barbara Vaccaro and her staff, supported the research persistently and creatively. Rita Rendell supported everything with tremendous resourcefulness and competence. The argument on sexual assault as a form of sex discrimination has been largely shaped in discussions with Andrea Dworkin over the years.
More recently it has been focused in collaboration with Elizabeth Shilton and other colleagues at the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) in litigation in Canada.Cass Sunstein has thought I should write my argument on abortion for some years and never neglected an opportunity to bring it up. The approach to reproductive control as a sex equality issue has also grown with colleagues at LEAF through a series of cases and legislative testimony. I have tried to footnote distinctive language by others and to highlight arguments focused and formulated by LEAF's submissions. My attempts will necessarily fall short of giving adequate credit to a collective process. Discussions about reproductive rights with Christine Boyle, Christie Jefferson, Helena Orton, and Lynn Smith were particularly formative. This aspect of the work owes the most to Mary Eberts. Her brilliant insights, depth of mind, breadth of knowledge, incisive yet tactful legal formulations, and her courage and tenacity in bearing witness to the truth of women's lives are written all over these pages. LEAF, of course, endorses only the content of its own fact.1. S. WEIL, 1 THE NOTEBOOKS OF SIMONE WEIL 152 (A. Wills trans. 1956). 2. In the United States, many men were also excluded from the official founding process. African American men and women were considered property. Indigenous peoples were to be subdued rather than consulted. Non-property owners were not qualified to participate in most states. C.
time.4 The political theory which formed the principled backdrop for the newAmerican republic certainly did not encourage their visibility. Hobbes grounded natural equality in the ability to kill.' Locke argued that whoever did not leave a regime consented to it.6 Rousseau once posited the primitive passions as "foo...